US hate groups energized by Trump: monitor

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - U.S.-based far-right hate groups have been galvanized by President Donald Trump's election, growing in size for the second consecutive year, a leading monitor said Wednesday.

In its quarterly Intelligence Report, the Southern Poverty Law Center said hate groups are at "near-historic highs”, up to 917 in 2016 from 892 the previous year.

The center said "the most dramatic change" came in the nearly 200 percent increase in anti-Muslim groups, up to 101 last year from 34 in 2014.

"Anti-Muslim hate has been expanding rapidly for more than two years now, driven by radical Islamist attacks including the June mass murder of 49 people at an Orlando, Fla., gay nightclub, the unrelenting propaganda of a growing circle of well-paid ideologues, and the incendiary rhetoric of Trump — his threats to ban Muslim immigration, mandate a registry of Muslims in America, and more," the report said.

A foiled October plot by a group calling itself the Crusaders to blow up a Kansas apartment complex where 120 Somali immigrants live highlights the dangers like-minded organizations pose.

The report said Trump's election has "electrified the radical right", which views Trump as "a champion of the idea that America is fundamentally a white man’s country”.

Since Trump won the Nov. 8 polls, he has selected a handful of advisors with apparent far-right sympathies. They have included an anti-LGBT advocate, and retired Gen. Michael Flynn who tweeted that "fear of Muslims is RATIONAL", and he called Islam "like cancer".

But "most remarkable," the center said, was Trump's selection of Steve Bannon as his chief strategist. Bannon is the former chief editor of Breitbart News, the premier platform for the alt-right, a rebranding of white supremacy as Anadolu Agency has previously reported.

"With Bannon’s appointment, white nationalists felt they had a man inside the White House," the center said.

The center pointed to a dramatic uptick in the number of hate incidents in the aftermath of Trump's victory. In all it counted 1,094 "bias incidents" in the 34 days that followed the election, saying "the hate was clearly tied directly to Trump’s victory".

Most recently, a New Jersey university cultural center used by Muslims to pray had a poster taped outside the building which read: "Imagine A MUSLIM-FREE AMERICA" in front of a silhouette of the Twin Towers that were destroyed when al-Qaeda hijackers flew planes into them in 2001.

The poster was put up by a group called the American Vanguard, which the hate group monitor said is one of the "energetic groups" that emerged last year with 12 chapters nationwide.